Bone-Cruncher

Today

This morning Becky mentioned that she was taking Carmen to an osteopath. I asked her if this was cranial osteopathy, but she said no.

"In my experience", I said "osteopaths are charlatans".

In My Day

So where did this sweeping opinion come from? When I worked for the Inland Revenue, much of my day was spent sitting at a desk and I found that my neck and upper back could become very stiff and sore. Somebody told me that the Civil Service encouraged staff to use osteopaths by having some on an approved list who carried out the treatment at reduced rates for civil servants

I found one in Eastbourne and trotted along. The therapist was a dour middle-aged man who said hardly anything during the sessions, didn't describe what he was doing and gave me no advice as to follow-up, posture, exercise and so on.

My sessions were twice-weekly and consisted of what appeared as brutal attacks on my skeleton. One of the few things he said, after an especially bone-crunching moment was that he had re-aligned some vertebrae.

I left his sessions in considerable pain which would take a couple of days to clear up. Eventually, when the pain hadn't ceased by the time I went to the next session, I stopped going. This was worse than the stiffness!

A couple of weeks later I did what I should have done in the first place: I went to see my doctor. I confessed to what I'd been doing and he wasn't particularly complimentary. He told me to strip my top half and he examined my back. "Well", he said "I can see that there are a couple of  misaligned vertebrae....." He gave me some advice about posture and the best sleeping positions and packed me off to a physiotherapist who was very helpful indeed.

I found some facts about osteopaths which suggest that what they offer is rooted in philosophy, not science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathy

But many people swear by their osteopaths, claiming that it's only through their help that they can stand upright, and whom am I to say they're wrong?